ceiling. the debt ceiling, we can use that as a lever to make the democrats give us significant cuts to the federal budget. so what they did in august of 2011 they said that we're going to allow -- we're not going to raise the debt ceiling. we're going to allow the federal government to default on previously acquired obligations of the united states so not pay our bills that we already acquired and risk our a.a.a. debt -- a.a.a. credit rating if you do not impose dramatic cuts. what the president said, ok, we'll give you some cuts upfront and we'll set up something called the supercommittee, three democrats from the house, three republicans from the house, three republicans from the senate, three democrats from the senate, we call that the supercommittee and they are going to give us an up or down vote on some other cuts. but if they don't then we are going to have this thing called the sequester and it will be across-the-board cuts in a dramatic and really imposing way. the sequester is what